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Scripps Research Joint Appointments

Assistant Professor, Dorris Neuroscience Center

Research Focus

Elucidating mechanical sensing: from mechanotransduction to sensory-motor processing.
Animals depend on reliable sensory information to perform activities such as locomotion, feeding and mating. The orchestrated muscle activation that underlies any type of motion critically depends on sensing mechanical forces. By sensing mechanical stimuli animals get the information about the position and motion of their body parts (proprioception), and about external mechanical impacts (hearing and touch senses). The simplest and most direct role of mechanical sensation is to provide the necessary information for precise and coordinated motor tasks. Despite the importance of mechanosensation in the animal kingdom, little is known about the molecular mechanisms that take part in it and how the sensory information is processed in the CNS. Fruit flies are an excellent model system for studying these topics since they perform a number of stereotypic and measurable motions that depend on mechanosensory information, yet their nervous system is relatively small and amenable to physiological analysis. We use genetic screens for uncoordinated flies to identify genes that participate in the response to mechanical stimuli and in the processing of the sensory information. We then characterize the role of each protein by combining genetic, biochemistry and morphology studies with the powerful in vivo tools such as electrophysiology and imaging. In addition to using mutants for revealing the mechanosensory molecular pathways, they provide a handle to study input-output relationships within the neural networks governing motion.

Education

Ph.D., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2000

Selected References

Cook B, Hardy RW, McConnaughey WB & Zuker CS. (2008) Preserving cell shape under environmental stress. Nature 452(7185) 361-4.

Zhang YF, Hoon MA, Chandrashekar J, Mueller KL, Cook B, Wu D, Zuker CS & Ryba NJP. (2003) Coding of sweet, bitter and umami tastes: similar signaling pathways. Cell 112, 293-301.

Minke B, Cook B.(2002) TRP channel proteins and signal transduction. Physiol. Rev. 82(2).

Cook B, Bar-Yaacov M, Cohen Ben-Ami H, Goldstein RE, Paroush Z, Selinger Z and Minke B. (2000) Phospholipase C and termination of G-protein-mediated signalling in vivo. Nature Cell Biology. 2(5) 296 – 301.